


The Best Worst Christmas Ever

by blueraspberrybubblegum



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Christmas, Collegestuck, F/M, Fluff, Mexico, Road Trips, biker chicks, trolls are hispanic for some reason, trust fund babies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-28
Updated: 2013-12-28
Packaged: 2018-01-06 10:55:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1105977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blueraspberrybubblegum/pseuds/blueraspberrybubblegum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You are make a big mistake, <em>señor</em>. This girl is what you call, very bad news.”</p>
<p>John shrugged. “It’s Christmas,” he said.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Best Worst Christmas Ever

**Author's Note:**

> This is un-beta'd fluff by someone who doesn't know a lick of Spanish. Ah well, I did my best. _Feliz Navidad!_

John swept off his sunglasses and leaned back precariously over the rear tire to check out the hand-lettered signs over the doorway. _Cocos Frios_ , they said, and _Every Hour Is Happy Here!_ “Are we here?”

“If ‘here’ is a shithole truck stop dressed up as a _cabaña_ with overpriced beers and a menu designed to appease the lowest common denominator of tourist – that would be you, _cabrón americano_ – then yeah, we’re here,” Karkat growled, lashing out at the kickstand in disgust. He peeled off his helmet and held it at arm’s length like a dead thing.

“Great! I’m starving!” John hopped off the bike and made for the shade of the thatched roof. “You coming?”

Karkat pulled a sour face and spit into the dust. “We’ve been bathing in exhaust and gasoline fumes for the last two hours. I’m never going to get the taste of asphalt out of my mouth. How on earth can you be hungry?”

“I always get hungry a couple of hours after breakfast. Come on, they have 2-for-1 and I need a drink.”

“It’s not even noon!”

“It’s Christmas, and we’re on vacation, and I want a real Mexican beer from a real Mexican bar, dammit. Indulge me.” He turned and ducked inside, addressing the silent shadow lurking next to the cash register. “ _Dos cervezas, por favor._ Uh, that one.” He pointed at a display bottle at random. “And menus, please.”

As the bartender turned away, John casually scoped out the rest of the establishment. It was a lot bigger than it looked from the street, brightly painted tables and chairs polka-dotting the concrete floor between bare wooden posts with light streaming in from the open sides. Three ceiling fans spun lazily in the salt-laden breeze blowing in from the back of the restaurant.

As for the other patrons…. There was only one, perched on a stool at the bar, and she was something else.

She looked to be about his age – maybe a little younger, he kept forgetting he was almost twenty-two – in cut-off shorts and a sheer top that showed off her midriff and shoulders and yes, Virginia, a string bikini underneath, hot pink to match her heart-shaped sunglasses that looked like they came from the kids’ section of Family Dollar, right next to the bin where she found her flimsy plastic flip-flops. Head to toe, she couldn’t have stood higher than his chest; two-thirds of it was leg and every inch of it was worth a second look. John gave her three for good measure. She looked like a starlet gone incognito.

She was arguing heatedly in fluid Spanish (not necessarily fluent, but good enough to John’s ear) with a burly gentleman in a crisp white polo that shouted _Thou Shalt Not Fuck With Me, I’m Management_.

Abruptly, she switched to English. “The sign says 2-for-1, where’s my 2-for-1? Look at this, _uno, dos, tres_ , no 2-for-1.”

“Beer only. Frozen drinks no include,” the man answered, steadfast. “ _Doscientos veinticinco pesos, señorita._ ”

“What a rip-off! I can’t believe this crap!” She rolled the empty bottle between her hands, tossing her head in the direction of the bartender. “Alejandro here told me told me everything was 2-for-1.”

“Javier,” the man said.

“Excuse me?”

“His name,” he repeated evenly, “is Javier. _Doscientos veinticinco pesos_ or I call _la policía._ You decision.”

“Hey, don’t worry about it. I’ve got it,” John said, gesturing at his chest. “Me. Put it on my bill, _por favor_.” John hoped to sneak it by Karkat, but it didn’t really matter. He had a long track record of buying things for pretty girls with little to no return on investment. Karkat might be mad, but he certainly wouldn’t be surprised.

At the sound of John’s voice, the girl glanced over, lifting her glasses to give him a good once-over before settling into a grateful smile. “Hey there, good-lookin’, what’s your name?”

“You are make a big mistake, _señor_. This girl is what you call, very bad news.”

John shrugged. “It’s Christmas,” he said, grinning, and the man walked away, muttering to himself.

“Hi, I’m John,” he said, reaching out to take her hand. It was even grimier than his, and ensconced in colorful paper admission bracelets nearly from elbow to wrist. _Another biker,_ he thought, _but where’s her bike?_ _The street out front is empty._ “My friend and I are getting some lunch. You’re welcome to join us.” He twisted to take the beers held out to him over the bar, and gestured over his shoulder, taking her acceptance as a given. “ _Uno mas, por favor. Mucho gracias._ ”

“Why, thank you kindly!” Abandoning her small forest of neon margarita glasses and empty bottles, she slung her threadbare messenger bag over one shoulder – its usual spot, judging by the tan line – and plopped herself into one of the empty chairs on the sun deck, rearranging bottles of red and green hot sauce and patting the spot she cleared for the beers.

Just as John set down the drinks, he felt a blow to the back of the head. “Take off your helmet, rich boy, you look like a fucking tool.”

“Oh, yeah,” he said, reaching for the chin strap. “This is my friend Karkat. Karkat, this is….” He trailed off, covering his embarrassment with the most charming smile he could muster, which, on a good day, was pretty dang charming. “Sorry, I didn’t catch your name?”

“Smooth,” muttered Karkat.

“Carmen,” the girl answered. “Charmed, I’m sure.” She held out her hand, palm down, and Karkat stared at it a moment before deciding he was supposed to shake it. He jerked it up and down one time and then dropped it. Awkward silence ensued.

“Carmen’s having lunch with us,” John said.

“Like hell she is. We’re having one beer, then we’re getting back on the road. I want to make it to the city by three so we can find my dad’s shop before the sun sets.”

“Empanadas, please,” John told the taciturn bartender, in open defiance of his best friend’s wishes. “And some guacamole for the table. Do you want anything?” he asked Carmen.

Reaching out for her drink, she smiled graciously and shook her head. “Just the beer for me, thanks.” The man went away again, and Karkat buried his head in his hands.

“Where you boys from?” she asked, raising the bottle to her lips with a smile. Her rings, silver and shiny polished shell, glittered in the hot sun.

“I’m from Washington, but we both go to A&M. I’m a bio major and Karkat’s in the civil engineering program. What about you? Where do you go to school?”

Karkat elbowed him roughly. “Not everybody gets to go to college, jerkface.” He sighed. “Forgive him, Carmen, he’s _privileged_.”

Wedging the slice of lime down into the neck of her bottle, she licked the juice from her fingers and threw Karkat a wink. “We can’t all be ‘burb babies, can we, hon?” Karkat, who grew up in a border town three hours south of San Antonio, nodded, caught himself, and threw back a long swallow. When he put the bottle down he seemed more relaxed.

“No offense,” John said. “I figured you were on winter break like us.”

“None taken,” she said lightly, pale eyes dancing over the rim of her drink. She leaned back, balancing her chair easily on two legs with her knees tucked against the table. To keep it from moving across the slick concrete, John braced it with his foot. The girl crinkled her eyes at him prettily. “Actually, me and my bro are on our way to the peninsula for New Year’s.”

“Oh, your brother’s here too?”

“Not _here_ , here. Around,” she said, swirling her bottle. “He had some business in town.”

“Well, I’m glad you’re not traveling alone. Mexico can be dangerous for a… girl like yourself.”                    

She smiled, as though she knew what he was thinking. _A pretty girl like you_. “Is that why you two are here together? Watchin’ out for each other on the road?”

“Yeah, well actually, Karkat was planning this trip with his girlfriend for like six months. They were going to Mexico City to meet her grandparents.”

The guacamole arrived, and Carmen swooped in immediately. “Girlfriend, huh? That’s funny, I thought you two were,” she raised a pierced eyebrow, “ _you_ know.” She shoved a chip and its payload into her mouth whole. _She chews with her mouth open_ , John thought. It should have been annoying, but instead it kind of… completed the package. She had a completely different sense of propriety, and it made her seem much more foreign to him than Karkat and his other Hispanic friends did.

He felt his cheeks start to burn. “What? No!” he said, waving his hand frantically. He glanced sideways, but his fellow Aggie was brooding over the screen of his cell phone.

“Just foolin’ with ya,” she said. “You’ve been staring at my boobs since you walked in the door.”

“Your tag’s sticking out,” John said, still blushing furiously but relieved to have a ready excuse.

“Oh! Thanks,” she laughed, reaching through her arm hole to tuck the white tag back into the lining of her bikini. The beer never left her hand, and she squealed when the condensation touched her bare skin. John watched her laughing with the sunlight caressing her back and the breeze caught up in her helmet-plastered platinum pigtails, and he thought, _I’m not getting away from this one, am I?_

John thought about all the girls he heroically managed not to fall in love with, all two of them: Dave’s sister, who happily turned out to be into other girls, and Karkat’s ex, who tragically turned out to be into potheads. And then he thought about all of the girlfriends he managed to hang on to until the four month mark, which was zero. Jade called it “a simple matter of selection bias” and offered a “friendly sisterly screening” before he was allowed to fall for the next (painter, singer, poet, dreamer, you name it) girl of the week, but Karkat was quick to point out that all of his girlfriends had one thing in common.

They were dating John Egbert.

“So what happened to the girlfriend, then?”

“She cheated on me,” Karkat interjected. “And she decided to tell me about it the night before my final project was due. Needless to say, I’m not graduating this year.” If true, it was a huge problem: his scholarship ran out in May, and now he had a motorcycle to pay off. Karkat glared across the table, bitterly resigned to the cruelty of the hard-knock life. “How about you, Carmen? You got any scabs that need picking? Bruises that need poking? Teeth that need pulling? I’m all ears.”

“Porter said he’d give you an extension. Here, have an empanada,” John offered, pushing his plate over. Karkat shoved it back and went back to his texting.

“He’s trying to reach his dad,” John offered by way of explanation. “We were hoping to spend Christmas with him, but Karkat hasn’t seen him in, like, eight years. Any luck, man?” His mouth drawn in a tight frown, Karkat shook his head.

Carmen laid her hand over his, pouting sympathetically. The gesture was simple enough, but there was a touch of genuine sadness in her eyes that made it more than just the passing pity of a stranger.

John ordered another pair of beers, since Karkat’s was barely touched.

“So what’s The Peninsula? Is that the name of a club or something?” Karkat made a scornful noise at his _gringo_ pal’s naïveté.

“The Yucatán peninsula? Cancún, tropical fish, _Girls Gone Wild_?” Feeling lost, John raised his eyebrows. “You call yourself a college student,” Carmen said with a wry grin. “I thought everybody went to Cancún for spring break. My bro took me to Cozumel last year for scuba certification. One of the dive masters down there owed him a favor.”

John spent last spring break on a mission trip to rural South Dakota, which sounded incredibly boring next to fucking _learning how to scuba dive in a foreign country_ , so he decided to let her do the talking from there on out. “Well, it sounds like you have plenty of time to get there,” he said. “It’s only Christmas Eve.”

She shook her head. “Do you even know where the peninsula is?” she said. “Here, let me show you.” She dropped her bag on the table, hunching over to dig through it. Her sunglasses fell off and tumbled under the table, to her overwhelming indifference. “Get rid of this stuff, would you, hon? I know they’re in here somewhere.”

John stacked the plates on a neighboring table, then, when Carmen pulled out a stack of postcards bound together by pink and blue hair bands that was the size of a small brick, he scrambled up to pull enough napkins out of the nearest dispenser to dry up all the rings left by their drinks. When turned back to the table, she was laying out her cards in the rough shape of a comma across the table.

“Here’s us,” she said, pointing to a spot roughly two inches above a generic-looking card depicting a line of beachfront hotels at sunset.

“Mazatlán,” he read. “That’s where Karkat’s dad is from.”

“It’s an alright town. Good fresh seafood,” Carmen said. She walked her fingers daintily across the table to a card featuring a quintet with the short jackets and broad _sombreros_ of _mariachi_ singers. “Here’s Guadalajara, the second-largest city in Mexico. We went to the film festival there last spring. I got to meet Alfonso Cuarón, who directed the best movie of all time.”

John racked his brain. “ _Y tu mamá también?_ ” he guessed.

“ _Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban,_ ” she said proudly.

“Nice,” John said. _I want to meet Alfonso Cuarón_ , he thought. _Better yet, I want to be Alfonso Cuarón, and meet beautiful, adoring, young adult wizard fiction fangirls at glamorous international film festivals._ He dreamed the dream for a moment, coming back to reality just before being mobbed by scores of blonde, sunkissed, scantily clad biker chicks with eyes that glow like light on the ocean after a squall.

“Next is Mexico City,” she said, as she skipped another hand’s breadth and laid out a Day of the Dead postcard with tattered edges. It had salsa-dancing skeletons on the front. “We’re not actually driving through, of course, that would probably tack on a whole ‘nother day. Unless my bro decides that he needs to swing by a party for some reason.”

“Have you been to all these cities?” John asked, eyeing the pile of cards. “Where do you sleep when you’re bouncing from place to place?”

“We camp on the beach when the weather’s good,” she smiled shyly. “If it’s too hot my bro’ll cut us some shade with his _machete,_ or sometimes we’ll spring for a hostel when it’s raining. In the city, we crash couches. Between the two of us, we have enough friends in the capital that we could sleep in a different room every week for a whole year.”

“I stayed in my first hostel last night,” John said. “It wasn’t very comfortable.”

“Best meal I ever ate was at a hostel in Baja California,” she countered amicably.

Her fingers tiptoed past a few more postcards, tossing off forgettably exotic-sounding names with the enviable ease of a local, when one of them caught John’s attention.

“Ciudad del Carmen. Like you!”

She gave him a confused look, then glanced back down at the postcard. “Carmen City,” she translated. “Right! Carmen, like me!” She smiled cheekily, but kept her eyes fixated on the table (to John’s vast disappointment), and she moved on to the next stop without sparing a breath.

“After that are some other little coastal towns,” she said in a rush, “but then you come to Mérida!” She dealt a postcard from her deck showing a buff-looking Native American in a headdress and loincloth, in a stiff, warlike pose. “Now we’re getting into Mayan territory,” she said. “Yucatán proper.”

As the vague shape of Mexico formed across the table, with their current locale between Carmen’s elbows and her mysterious destination apparently situated squarely in front of John (Karkat was adrift offshore, somewhere in the Gulf), he noticed a pattern in Carmen’s postcard collection.

Not in the pictures – they came in all colors and sizes, from shiny-new to creased and faded, kitschy to elegant and every shade in between – but in their texture: every single one was etched, margin to margin, with the imprint of a ballpoint pen in a cramped and unmistakably childish hand.

She was telling him about Chichén Itzá and the sun and the morning star and gods playing ball. He tried to pay attention, but the words rushed past his head. All he could think about was the last card, the one that would bring her to her journey’s end and right into his arms.

“Afterwards, we’ll drive off into the night, and in the morning, we’ll wake up on the beach and watch the sun rise over the ocean.” Humming happily, she placed a final postcard, letting the corner slip over her thumb so it made a soft sound against the table, and folded her hands expectantly.

He tilted his head to read the name of the city. “Tulum,” he said, confused. “What’s in Tulum?”

“Only the party of the century! Everybody who’s anybody is going to be there,” Carmen said. She drew something that looked like a sky-blue vinyl wallet out of her back pocket, but as she opened it, it doubled and doubled again, revealing a poster for a music festival. It was wrinkled and crisscrossed with packing tape, as if it had been torn off of a telephone pole.

Scanning the lineup, he came to the sinking conclusion that his musical education was woefully inadequate. “I’ve never heard of any of these people,” he admitted.

“Well, then, _listen_ ,” she said, and she put a pair of headphones on the table. Nice headphones. Headphones that probably cost more than everything else she owned put together.

She stood, touching John’s hand, the same gesture she used to calm Karkat. She leaned in close, looked him deep in the eyes, and said –

“I gotta pee like woah. Watch my stuff for me, will ya, hon?” She pressed play on her infinitesimal MP3 player and sauntered to the end of the bar, taking a moment to get her bearings before lurching off to the right.

John put on the headphones and lost time.

Five minutes later, Karkat pulled him out of a zenlike reverie. “Hey, who do you think Callie is?”

“Who the heck is Callie? Dude, you have to hear this. This is… ‘XX’? Who calls their band XX? Is it like Dos Equis?”

“Forget the music, look at this,” Karkat said, flipping over postcards compulsively. “They’re all addressed to some girl named Callie.”

“Callie is none of your goddamn beeswax,” Carmen announced, snatching her Day of the Dead postcard out of Karkat’s hand. “Nosy,” she added, pursing her lips. “I expected better of upstanding young college dweebs like you.”

“I didn’t do anything!” John protested, standing to help her gather her cards. He tried to catch her eyes, but she refused to look at him. “I could help you mail them, if you want,” he said desperately. “Do you need postage?”

“Nope,” she said shortly.

“I could give you a lift to the post office. Can I borrow the bike, Karkat?”

“I don’t need your help.”

“If you’re worried about the money, we can find a FedEx and mail them all at once. There’s probably a FedEx around here somewhere, right? FedEx?” he asked, catching the bartender’s eye. He gave John a weird look and continued to polish the margarita glasses.

“We are not mailing anything,” Carmen said, slamming her bag down on the table and shoving the headphones into the bottom, “because the last time I saw Callie she was in a coffin. That was three years ago, in Dallas.”

“Oh, uh… crap,” John said. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

Carmen shrugged, sniffed. “At least it’s over now. We only stuck around long enough to put her brother away,” she said. “That’s why we left Texas, you know. Too many bad memories.” Karkat clearly didn’t buy it; with his arms folded, he continued to eye her with distrust.

“Let me at least help you get into the concert,” John said, after the silence grew too uncomfortable to bear. Miserably, because all he had to offer was money, not excitement or adventure – not knowing whether she chose the road or it chose her, not knowing anything about her except that her life was hard but at least it was _interesting_ , not knowing if she would even remember his name when she left the bar – he tapped the corner of the poster, where the price of admission was listed. One hundred and fifty U.S. dollars.

Karkat made a noise in the back of his throat and reached for his phone.

“I can’t let you do that, John,” she said gently, and stopped directly in front of him. Down the road, the trademark roar of a Harley-Davidson grew slowly but inexorably louder.

“My bro is such a butt. Why can’t there be more nice guys, like you?” she sighed. “Thanks for the drinks, hon.” She stretched up on her tiptoes and laid a chaste kiss on his cheek. The butt pinch that accompanied it was… not so innocent.

She slid the heart-shaped glasses over her eyes like a window slamming shut. Belatedly, John realized who the approaching biker must be. “If we make it to Tulum, how do we find you?” he asked wistfully.

“Ask for my bro. _El principe_. Everybody knows him, he’s practically famous,” she said, sliding the poster, wallet-sized once more, into her back pocket. “Here he is now. Gotta dash!”

She threw her arms around the biker who pulled up to carry her away. Kissing him firmly on the corner of the mouth, she pulled herself sidesaddle onto the seat and blew them a kiss. John waved back, while Karkat glowered suspiciously at the vaunted, enigmatic brother. The guy was big enough to make two Carmens, and held out her child-size helmet with a hand nearly as scarred as its glove. The rest of him was made up entirely of tattoos and black leather.

“Did you get what you came for?” Carmen shouted over the growling engine as she snapped the helmet on over her braids, which stuck out the bottom in two curled tufts like she was smuggling a pair of cottontail rabbits. His answer, if there was one, was lost in a cloud of dust and scorching exhaust.

“ _La cuenta, por favor,_ ” Karkat said tiredly, and then, to John, “I guess you’re wondering if that guy was really her brother.”

“No, I was just trying to place her accent,” John answered. “Where do you think she’s from? Georgia? Sometimes she sounded like Scarlet O’Hara, and sometimes she sounded like Rogue from the X-Men movie.” He turned to his friend. “Why would she lie about her brother?” he asked, smiling.

Karkat gave him a hard look. “Why not? She lied about everything else. Her accent was fake, her name was fake, everything about her was fake. She probably made up the story about her friend too.”

“How do you know – ” John started, but he remembered the way she reacted when he mentioned Carmen City, and he fell silent. Karkat, watching the change come over his face, nodded to himself and picked up the check that appeared on the table as if by magic.

“Forty-five dollars!” he yelped. “Where the fuck did these margaritas come from? And what is this charge for five pesos, the asshole tax?”

“She was arguing about her bill when I came in, and I offered to cover it,” John said guiltily. “Here, let me get it.” He reached for his wallet and came up empty.

Frowning, he patted his pockets. Then he checked his chair. “Karkat. Karkat, I think she took my wallet. Karkat, my passport was in that wallet.”

“You idiot! I can’t take you _anywhere!_ ” he sputtered, pulling out a wad of pesos. He practically threw them at the hapless bartender. “You are the textbook definition of ‘easy mark’, you know that?”

He had already calmed down by the time the change came back, along with a postcard showing a nativity scene and the words _Feliz Navidad!_ Karkat flipped it over, grunted, and handed it to John. “Told you her name wasn’t Carmen,” he said.

_dear callie,_

_hola! its me again ur bestest globotorotting amiga_

_just wanted u to no i miss u loads n bunches_

_aint a day goes by that im not like man where my chica at_

_we stopped at a teensy lil bump inna road but dirks bein a huge butt_

_he says its just a pitt stop rox we gotsta keep goin_

_n then he goes off & leaves me in a shitty ass bar like srsly 4evr _

_whatevs at least the ritas r yummay_

_neway ill rite u again when we get back to tulum_

_cant wait to tell u all about the trip!_

_felice navidad!!!! thats merry xmas in mexican :o_

_so many exs and ohs_

_luv ur friend,_

_roxy l._

“I’ve got good news and bad news,” Karkat said.

“Huh,” John answered, studying the card. _Her name is Roxy_. She looked like a Roxy. There was no address on it – or on any of the cards Karkat showed him, come to think of it – which meant that he had no way to track her down; on the other hand, it also meant the part about Callie being dead was probably true after all.

Karkat handed him his cell phone. “What’s this?” asked John, squinting at the screen nearsightedly. “I can’t read it, it’s in Spanish.”

“It says ‘wrong number’,” Karkat said. “We’re not going to Mazatlán for Christmas. That’s the bad news.”

“Oh, man! That’s so fucking dumb! I can’t believe he changed his number without telling you!”

“Screw him. The only reason I even wanted to find my dad was to punch him in the face for walking out on mom and me and Kankri. The good news is,” Karkat said slowly, as though he already regretted each word before it left his mouth, “now nothing’s stopping us from going to Tulum.” He caught John’s eye, lips reluctantly curling into a daring smile that reflected the delight on his friend’s face.

“If you can stand the thought of spending your first Christmas away from mommy and daddy slumming it up in a bedbug-ridden cot on the outskirts of one of the biggest cities in the world, then I say… _Feliz Navidad,_ jerkwad. Let’s hit the road.”


End file.
